"h.e.l.lo," he said. "Me."

"h.e.l.lo, you."

"I'm sorry," he said. "You don't have to say anything to Ben."

"I don't mind," she said as she drove. "I'll do it if you want me to."

"No," he said. "I don't want you to. It's okay. It's done. It never happened."

"If you say so," she said.

She was pulling into Treasury parking, normally only available to the most senior employees, but Cerny had arranged a spot for her. She showed her government pa.s.s. It opened the gate. A guard waved her through.

"I say so," he said. "I'm fine with everything. I love you."

"Love you too."

"Let's go to the Athenian tonight, okay?"

"Looking forward to it," she answered.

Her fiance could get a little testy, a bit territorial, a bit overprotective at times. She already knew that. But sound reason would always prevail. There was never any reason for him to get jealous. But what stayed with her was an underlying subtext. In his eyes, in his spirit, he seemed to have a premonition of some sort. A sense of danger. Maybe of potential loss. Or maybe he sensed something imperfect that was in the air and yet to come.

The worst part about it was that she shared the same feeling. There was somewhere hanging out there the notion that a third party could somehow do something that could come between them, separate them, take that perfect partner away from the other. It was a horrible sensation. But was it really there? Or were their worst fears just wandering around like sprits or phantoms, looking to settle somewhere?

TWENTY-TWO.

On her final day before departure, Alex had lunch with her boss, Mike. He wished her well and expressed the fear that she might be permanently a.s.signed outside his department. She rea.s.sured him that if that were the case, she had heard nothing about it. Nor was she inclined to stay with this sort of a.s.signment. She was anxious to do a one-time-only job and return to what pa.s.sed for a normal life.

In the afternoon there was a final torturous Ukrainian lesson from the baroness. Then in the late afternoon, a final briefing from Michael Cerny on Ukrainian politics. "There's been tyranny, criminal behavior, and instability for a thousand years. Probably more. No point to expect much different now," he said.

"Thanks for the cheerful worldview," she said.

"I'm a realist, so don't mention it," Cerny answered. "I'll try to say h.e.l.lo before you leave tomorrow. If I miss you, don't worry about it."

She left the office at 6:00 p.m. and went to the gym, partly out of habit, partly because exercise released tension.

She showered, went home, and changed into some casual clothes. Robert picked her up at 9:00 p.m.

They went out to a nice place for dinner, a French place they liked in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, just a fifteen-minute walk across the Duke Ellington Bridge that spanned Rock Creek Park. La Fourchette on the Eighteenth Street Strip. Great food, but not at all formal, with a genuine French woman keeping an eagle eye on guest satisfaction.

Robert was irritated by a rea.s.signment within the White House. His duties hadn't changed but his partner had. The Service had brought in a ballistics expert named Reynolds Martin to accompany the president on the impending trip and join the small army of a.s.signed agents. Robert was a.s.signed to partner with Martin, whose behind-the-back nickname was "Jimmy Neutron."

"The boy genius," Robert said, as he glanced at the menu. "Or at least he thinks he is."

Alex managed to laugh.

"Anyway, after the trip, he's back to the Denver office, so I don't have to deal with him for too long."

"Single guy?" she asked.

"Family. He's got a wife in Colorado Springs and a girl. Tina. Age eight."

"Jimmy Neutron," she said. "That's funny. I like that."

They both laughed. "To tell you the truth, he doesn't seem like a bad guy to me. Other people have had their issues though. Here," he said, picking up the wine list and handing it to her. "You read French and you know what I like. Pick something out."

She picked out a Ctes du Rhne, four years old, and ordered a couple of steaks. Why not? They had a great dinner and got gently buzzed.

After dinner, they went back to his place for a dessert and some coffee.

He had a small gift for her.

He had visited one of the better-known jewelers in Washington, an extension of a big New York store. He had picked out an inauspicious but pretty bracelet for her; a strand of rolled silver threaded with gold. It came in the store's normal blue box with a white ribbon.

She opened the box and immediately let him place it on her wrist.

"Just one more thing for me to remove on our wedding night," he teased her. They laughed together and embraced.

"Wear it in Ukraine," he said. "When I see you in Kiev I'm going to look for it."

"It's a promise," she said.

"You also have to promise to return safely," he said. "I don't like the fact that you'll be there for three days on your own."

"I'll be okay."

"I don't like Cerny either," he said.

She was startled. "I thought he was your friend," she said.

"No. I only know him. Met him twice. I don't have anything against him, but he's an acquaintance, not a friend."

"Did you ever have a chance to-?"

"Oh, yeah I ran their names against the personnel computers," he said. "I didn't find anything that I didn't already know."

She asked directly. "Is he CIA or not? And that battle-ax who works with him. Countess von Olga. What about her?"

"No entries on her," he said. "If he's CIA, he's at a high enough level so that my own access to it is blocked. I can't find anything further than that. But that doesn't address the 'blue card-green card' situation," he said.

"What's that?"

"Back in 1992 after the CIA was. .h.i.t with major budget cuts, they started contracting out a lot of special a.s.signments. A CIA officer could turn in retirement papers and his blue ID badge one day and go to work for a military contractor the next day. He or she would come back into the same Langley building with a green ID the next morning at a higher salary but with no government oversight. After September of 2001, the outsourcing went completely nuts. Green-badge bosses were recruiting blue-badge employees right in the CIA cafeteria."

"And no one stopped it?"

"Who would stop it during that era? Figure that the federal budget includes about five hundred million for intelligence gathering, but now the CIA only gets one percent of that. The Pentagon gets the rest and pays the military contractors. The taxpayers get three times as high a bill, but if there's a screwup, the Pentagon 'cla.s.sifies' it so no one can investigate. So even if Cerny has a State Department ID, who knows who's really running his operation?"

"Got it."

"Take it from there."

"Got it," she said again, nodding, and not rea.s.sured in the least.

She arrived home past 1:00 a.m. She organized her apartment, wrote out checks to pay bills, and dropped them in the mail chute in the hallway.

She walked back into her own apartment, closed the door, stopped, and listened.

There was something about her own place that was giving her the creeps these days. She couldn't place it, but it was there.

She stood perfectly still and c.o.c.ked her head.

Man, this was driving her nuts.

There was something! There absolutely was!

She put her ear to the wall, then the floor. She opened the window and listened. She couldn't find it. She went out to the hall and then she picked up on it.

She looked at her watch. Okay. It was late. So to be safe, she went back into her apartment and found her Glock. She loaded it and put it in a holster. She pulled on her UCLA sweatshirt so the gun wouldn't be visible and went for a walk.

Out the door. Down the hall. Past the utility closet that the phone and cable people used to repair things when the service was screwed up.

Down the stairs. Onto the floor below her. Then down to the third floor.

Then she had it.

Two apartments under her.

Music. Voices. Whoever lived there was jamming late. She sighed. It was bad manners to be making such a racket at a late hour.

Okay. She was turning into a nut case. Her nerves were shot for this undercover a.s.signment and this proved it. Worse, she realized that there was something else unsettled in her spirit too.

She went back upstairs and crashed into bed, leaving the Glock on the bedside table and the final packing to the next morning. There would be one unscheduled stop tomorrow morning and no one she worked with would know about it.

TWENTY-THREE.

On the morning of her departure for Kiev, Alex drove to her parish, St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square. St. John's was a tall building from the early 1800s, with a handsome white steeple and light yellow exterior. There were white columns at the entrance and stone steps leading upwards. The church was on a busy urban corner, two blocks from the White House. Many presidents had worshiped here.

She was lucky with parking, finding a place less than two blocks away. The morning was cold, but there was no precipitation. The sun, in fact, was breaking through clouds for the first time in several days.

Alex had joined St. John's when she came back to Washington after accepting her job at Treasury. She felt comfortable here. The atmosphere mixed just the right amount of Protestant tradition and reverence with inclusiveness.

She found her way to a pew halfway down the center aisle.

She knew most of her friends would smirk at her habit, her belief, her "superst.i.tion," as they might call it. She knew what people sometimes said about "faith" behind her back, but it was a free country and she felt comfortable with her beliefs.

She felt better being here. There were a handful of other people in the church, including an a.s.sistant pastor who recognized her, nodded, and gave her a warm smile. There were a few tourists at the front.

She prayed for Robert. She prayed that G.o.d would watch over her. She could hear her own words echo in the old church, and she didn't care who else could hear her if the Almighty could.

She prayed so hard that her eyes almost hurt and began to tear. She prayed as if the act of supplication was something new, or something renewed or reborn. She prayed to Jesus and to G.o.d. And then she realized something about herself and about the present.

She was deeply frightened for one of the first times in her adult life. She deeply feared something about this trip, and there was no way now to back out.

She prayed out loud and she listened and she didn't hear anything in return except the distant drone of DC traffic in the distance.

Then she sat up. She felt better. She drew a deep breath and composed herself.

In a few hours her taxi would arrive.

She had done everything she could to prepare for this trip.

Whatever G.o.d's plan was for her, she told herself, she would have to go down that road.

She was finally ready to travel.

TWENTY-FOUR.

Lt. Rizzo parked his car in the entrance area to Le Grand Hotel on the via Vittorio Emanuelle. He brushed away the doorman, flashing his police credentials. For a moment, the career cop stood in front of the hotel and took in the grandeur of the place.

Le Grand Hotel was more luxurious than any other in Rome. Not even the Excelsior or the Eden could match its excesses. Its only drawback was the gritty Stazione Termini nearby, the Roman railway station, a bustling intersection of business people, excited travelers, pickpockets, creeps, hookers, and weirdoes. But once inside Le Grand Hotel, all thoughts of trains and of the people at the station vanished.

The lobby was resplendent with sparkling Murano gla.s.s chandeliers, white columns, marble busts, and grinning cherubs, a lavish but tasteful explosion of French and Italian styles in muted gold and pastels. Rizzo had been in a few of the bedrooms over the years, on official business and otherwise, and remembered them being recently restored in what the hotel called the "Barocco" style, a mongrel blend of baroque and rococo.